


II: No, You Don't

by LuckyFeedback



Series: Under and Through [2]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Game: Resident Evil 3 Remake (2020), Horror, Plothole Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:22:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24879919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyFeedback/pseuds/LuckyFeedback
Summary: Straight out of the gate we need to talk trigger warnings: there’s a ton of stuff in here that might offend people. Sexist, discriminatory language against women, violence against women, describing masculine/non-feminine women as unattractive which may be offensive to some readers, some homophobic terminology and talking about M/M homosexuality as a joke, and lots sexual situations that edge into non-con territory. This piece is from a point of view of a guy who is cruel and selfish and is most definitely not characterized here as egalitarian or a feminist, by any stretch. It doesn’t represent what I think or feel, but Nicholai is the worst kind of bastard, so I’m gonna go full-bore with it. Be aware that if any of this bothers you enough to not read, its here, and it gets pretty dark, so I’d encourage you to skip if any of these are touchy topics.No, You Don’t focuses on Nicholai, and is an writer's take on his time in Raccoon City, his machinations and his role in the events that take place. This one is over the course of the entire game, so it might span multiple parts.
Series: Under and Through [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785910
Comments: 11
Kudos: 16





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Straight out of the gate we need to talk trigger warnings: there’s a ton of stuff in here that might offend people. Sexist, discriminatory language against women, violence against women, describing masculine/non-feminine women as unattractive which may be offensive to some readers, some homophobic terminology and talking about M/M homosexuality as a joke, and lots sexual situations that edge into non-con territory. This piece is from a point of view of a guy who is cruel and selfish and is most definitely not characterized here as egalitarian or a feminist, by any stretch. It doesn’t represent what I think or feel, but Nicholai is the worst kind of bastard, so I’m gonna go full-bore with it. Be aware that if any of this bothers you enough to not read, its here, and it gets pretty dark, so I’d encourage you to skip if any of these are touchy topics. 
> 
> No, You Don’t focuses on Nicholai, and is an writer's take on his time in Raccoon City, his machinations and his role in the events that take place. This one is over the course of the entire game, so it might span multiple parts.

_“I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.” ― Emo Philips_

A credit to his restraint, Nicholai knocked first.

She opened the door, just a crack so her eye was visible; her dark hair was disheveled around her face, and when she saw him, she sighed in a great, relieved rush.

“You’re late,” she said, “I called you three hours ago.”

Nicholai smiled, tight-lipped, leaned against the wall. “Are you not happy to see me?”

Her eyes, so dark brown they were almost black, searched him, distrustful. “Give me a minute,” she said, and closed the door. Something heavy scraped behind it, squealing against floor tiles. When the door cracked open by an inch or two, Nicholai took the invitation, and sauntered inside.

Her office was torn apart, everything moved and thrown to the floor; her desk had been moved to block the only entrance or exit, potted plants overturned, paperwork littering the floor like a child’s paper mache project in overlapping reams of white and cream against the black carpet. Nicholai gave the sheafs of loose paper glances of cursory interest.

“I’m surprised you actually came,” she said, an attempt at sarcasm, but her voice shook too much for it to be believable; her hands trembled, visible even across the room. She crossed her arms tight over her chest, her eyes averted. The white of her lab coat, over a smart business skirt-suit, was dingy gray and flecked with spots of blood. 

“We have our orders,” Nicholai replied, light and affable. “Besides — we are old friends, yes? This is what friends do. We help where we can.”

She didn’t respond, silent, her eyes downcast. Nicholai stepped over the fallen objects on the floor; he picked up one of the framed photos from where it sat on a nearby bookshelf, and she looked at him, her attention pointed, sudden. “What are you doing?”

“This is your husband?” He asked. If you ordered a catalog from a store that sold toothless men who were only men through title and accidents of biology, this man would be the poster boy — soft, comfortable stomach, shorter than average, in need of a haircut, button down shirt and khakis, thin limbs and narrow shoulders. The many times Nicholai had been here before, she’d placed all the photos face-down… that wouldn’t have stopped him, but he noticed things like that. She crossed the room and took the photo from him. 

“Are we going, or not?” She asked, placed it back down.  
“Of course.”

She walked away from him and Nicholai’s eyes, hungry and evaluating, settled on the muscles of the backs of her thighs, the roundness of her hips under the coat. She opened the door and Nicholai followed behind; he leaned his hand on it, over her shoulder. The door clapped shut under his weight.

“I can’t help but notice…” he said, “that when you need… safety, protection… you didn’t call your husband to come collect you. Hm?” She turned her head to glance at him out of the corner of her eye.

“This is what you do best, right?” She asked, her voice pitched low, whisper-quiet.

Nicholai leaned in so close he could feel the heat of her throat; her hair smelled like an intermingling of shampoo and sweat. His body pressed against her from behind, and he spoke directly into her ear. “Maybe you should tell me what I do best.”

It didn’t take much to pitch them back into each other, old habits and preferences rushing to the fore through practice and memory. She didn’t have to turn around; theirs was not an arrangement where they’d ever kissed, the closest maybe being a bite here and there. He grabbed the back of her neck and forced her down over the desk she’d used to bar the door, pushed her grey twill skirt up, pulled her underwear aside. Near the end she started to protest, wiggled and told him “not so rough” through ragged breaths, but didn’t actually move to stop him, didn’t use their safe word — not that he’d have cared or complied. Not this time. 

He came inside her, and her eyes flew open, her lips parted in shock, and this time she jerked hard against his grasp, dark curls bouncing with the effort; she couldn’t escape him unless he let her, but he was done. He released her, no longer needing her body, turned and zipped up his pants, secured his belt with a jingle of metal and a cinch of canvas.

“Are you serious?” Breathless in offense, she turned to him. “I’m _married_ , Nicholai. What the f—”

Her voice seized in her throat when she saw the gun. She put her hands up, her eyes flicked back and forth between his face and the barrel. He pulled the trigger and her head snapped back, blood flung across frosted glass of the door in a garnet-red gash, and she stood for a helpless moment, blinked, then sunk to her knees. Her body fell face-first onto the floor, limp, boneless.

Nicholai rolled her over with his boot; her eyes stared up at him in shock, her lips parted. He slipped a small rectangular device out of his pocket — a camera. He centered her face in the frame, took a photo, jabbed the screen in a series of commands to upload it to the specified server, and waited.

_Dr. Sofia Rudolph, Umbrella Pharmaceutical Division_  
_STATUS: Deceased._  
_Status confirmed._  
_… … …_  
_Deposit made to account XXXXXXX3985, 34,000RUB._

“Phew,” Nicholai sighed, a theatric, mocking sound. He gestured to her body, shaking the recorder in indication before her sightless, dead eyes. “Thank you for a wonderful night. Give my regards to your husband.”

He stepped over her corpse, and shut the door behind him, into the darkness of the hallway and its whooping sirens.

Outside, Patrick waited, leaned against a low fence, smoking a thin cigar that twisted into fragrant, sweet smoke. Nicholai stalked past him, wordless, and Patrick kicked himself off of the fence to follow.

“So what’s the word? Was Dr. Rudolph there or not?”

Nicholai paused. “Dead, I’m afraid,” he said, “very sad. Brilliant woman. Yours?”

Patrick took another draw of his smoke and flicked it to the pavement, wet and glittering from the night’s rain. “All dead. Few of them moving around, but, same thing. Not sure what they expected from a bunch of pencil-necks in the middle of the fucking apocalypse, but that’s corporate for you, I guess. Lets get back to the substation and brief the Captain.”

Patrick's expression changed then, and he indicated Nicholai's face with a gesture. Nicholai felt his cheek with the pads of his fingers; small drops of blood came away, smeared in vital, husky crimson. “You good to go?”

Nicholai smiled at him, then, rubbed his fingers together. His smile was closer to the grimace of a predator than an expression of happiness; something _just so_ was off in that smile, and it gave Patrick the creeps. 

“Of course,” Nicholai said, “Time is money, friend.”


	2. Chapter 2

Nicholai knew. 

That wasn’t a gloat, rather a statement of fact. Nicholai was a man possessed of above-average intelligence and, more importantly, the wisdom of where and when to impart that intelligence for maximum gain. He was _certainly_ smarter than every backwater jerk-off he’d been forced to work with in this unit. 

For example, he knew that the man behind him, with his dark skin and beady eyes and insistent questioning, that man wasn’t here because he liked Nicholai’s company. Not by accident, not random chance of patrol assignments. Patrick was watching him, perhaps even recording him, waiting for Nicholai to slip up where he could see. Waiting for evidence.

Nicholai knew that Umbrella knew. Maybe Umbrella even knew that Nicholai knew that Umbrella knew. But that would be a problem for tonight. 

They drew closer to the substation, located deep in the heart of Raccoon City’s downtown district. They ran into pockets of resistance that they only escaped by withdrawing their attempts to rescue ill-fated survivors and running for their lives, covering each other as they climbed chain-link fences and vaulted barricades. Despite the frantic crush of activity outside, despite the volleys of high-caliber weapons fire and explosions, the Freaks’ numbers hadn’t reduced; that number had easily tripled since they’d left, fueled by human panic and stupidity. 

Nicholai wiped the sweat from his upper lip with the flat of his forearm and briefly considered leaving Patrick behind. It would have been easy, and under the pall of confusion and violence, he had all the plausible deniability he needed. However, Umbrella would be expecting Patrick to report back. And if he was watching Nicholai, which he was, he might have some kind of recorder. They were mercenaries — contractors, the younger ones called themselves, a softer, more gentle terminology for an straightforward, ugly, and necessary job — but outright murder in the field was still frowned upon, even if it meant your own survival. Especially with a romantic, illogical dinosaur like Viktor at the helm, who insisted they treat each other like some sort of military units, some sort of brothers-in-arms, not the soldiers of fortune they actually were.

The Freaks’ forms multiplied, following the men down the street, crashing out of closed doors and stumbling on broken ankles and stiffened joints with arms outstretched. A clatter of machine gun fire from above rung a line of angular metallic reports against the pavement in a column of sparks, splattering the soft heads and carving off pieces of the bodies, separating the two men from one another. It was a perfect opportunity, and Nicholai took a handful of cautious steps backwards, letting the riot of shambling bodies in between he and Patrick, who looked at him in desperate confusion.

“What the fuck’re you doing?!” Patrick yelled, “Let’s _go_!”

“It’s not safe,” Nicholai called to him, “head back to the station. I’ll circle around and meet you.”

Patrick cursed and took off in a run, his machine gun cradled in his arms. Once he was gone, Nicholai’s face relaxed, and he walked at a brisk pace towards the building in the distance, unconcerned with his new friends that followed him. The flat, sleek little device — mostly a touch screen with a black protective bumper — that he had lifted from Sofia’s office began to rumble against Nicholai’s chest.

As he walked, he looked over his shoulders, then retrieved the device. Nicholai looked at the screen, with brief glances up to make sure his route was still clear. What he found were varying shades of green and black, a grainy image, much like night vision goggles, and he was confused for a brief moment, with no context or framework to understand what he was seeing.

On the screen, an image of a street. In the lower left hand corner, numbers — _206m… 200m… 188m. Acquiring target… acquiring target… acquiring target… STARS Signal locked **.**_

Nicholai watched. Suddenly, a picture — straight on, like a passport photo — appeared, of a man with short, dark hair, and a roundish face. _Bradley Simon Vickers_ , it said, and the numbers in the corner began to drop in multiples of 20 as the vision shook, thudding steps sounding as the street raced by in a streak of green and black. The image sailed into the air, and the feeling of vertigo and disorientation was matched only by the exhilaration. It wasn’t an urban legend, or a rumor — the Project was here, and it worked. It actually _worked_.

Nicholai stored the control device against his chest and ducked into the door of the building.

***

Nicholai took the stairs, landing in a jump onto the rooftop. It was lined with black tar paper that scraped under the soles of his boots. The air, turbulent and cautionary, whipped and howled and smelled of crackling fires, of something old and sacred, something as old as humans themselves — warfare.

Nicholai took a deep breath in, held it, and released it in a shaking sigh.

A man hunkered down near the edge of the roof, clad in plated armor and a helmet, turned his head to the sound of Nicholai’s boots. “You’re twenty late,” he said, “you were supposed to relieve me at 1900. I’m fucking exhausted.”

“I ran into resistance,” Nicholai said, a shrug in his voice. “There are more of them than we anticipated.”

“Isn’t that just the order of the day, eh? Well, whatever. C’mere.”

Nicholai walked to him in his confident stalk. Below, he could see only one of the UBCS operatives, one he’d recognize from miles away: Oliveira, with his shaggy head of hair and graceless, plodding gait, stood atop a parked car, looking back and forth for civilians he could wave through to the subway entrance nearby. The subway gate Nicholai had locked, barred from the other side. Oliveira would have to wait to find that out for himself, and hopefully when he did, _he_ was on the receiving end of a hungry mob that had no patience and tore his muscles from his bones in ribbons and wet, peeling chunks. At least this would be a two-for-one fire sale; maybe three-for-one, if Patrick was as stupid as he’d hoped. 

“We’re laying down cover fire. Rambo down there, stupid bastard, volunteered for street duty ‘cause we were short, but we’ve had words of flying BOWs, huge spiders, whatever the fuck. This guy right here,” the man patted a weapon, that looked like little more than a green tube with fluted ends, “it’ll make short work of ‘em, at least give him time. Or you time, depending on your opinion who deserved the cover fire.” The man stood and arched his back, cracking every vertebrae on the way down. “Fuck, what a night.”

“Ah. Interesting,” Nicholai said. “Oh — one more word from the Captain.”

“Yeah?” The man asked. He looked down at the street below, smoking his cigarette, watching the carnage with a sort of world-weary detachment.

Nicholai kicked him, dead in the center of his lower back. The man tipped, at first flailing for purchase with cartoonish spinning arms, and then plummeted to the street below, exploding against the pavement in a Rorschach splatter of blood. Nicholai saw one thing in that pattern.

Money. 

Nicholai unfolded the kickstand on the back of the monitor, set it before him, to his side. He settled on the flat of his belly, got as comfortable as he could, braced his hips and a knee against the roof, and watched. In the distance, a helicopter, banking and climbing on whirling blades, searched a nearby roof with a spotlight. Nicholai adjusted the sight mounted on the top of the rocket launcher, zooming in until the image became clear: the figure of a woman, short, with wide hips and thick legs, her short brown hair whipping in the helicopter’s wind buffer, waving her arms above her head to signal it down. A shrieking, computerized siren sounded beside him — he looked to the woman then back to the screen. Those Red letters again, spelling _STARS signature locked, target 52m. 50m. 44m. 32m._ Another photo appeared, taking the place of the man with the fat face — a young woman, short dark hair and a smile that was nervy, maybe even excited. 

_Jillian Danielle Valentine_ , said the display.

“A celebrity,” Nicholai laughed to himself, elated by his good fortune. “How nice for me.”

Albert Wesker had done one thing well in his entire fucking life, and that was his covert collection of DNA samples from these people, these STARS. The pheromones in those samples emanated from them like a stink, signatures in their skin cells and sweat and urine gravity, things that were as distinct as a fingerprint. The Nemesis project absorbed those signals through a proprietary gland, like a dog tracking a scent through tall grass. The helicopter in the distance circled the roof and unfurled a rope ladder for her to climb, and she ran towards it. 

Somewhere in the distance the second target’s vital signs stopped, flatlining, and beside the man’s round face said the word _Signal Unreadable_. Nicholai sucked his teeth. Fuck. At least he had one left in the city. That counted for something, at least. And she had name recognition; no doubt he could leverage _this_ one for more money. He could make it work.

Nicholai hunkered behind the sights of the green tube, checked its round, braced his shoulder, and fired. A whistling projectile sailed through the night air on a comet-tail plume of flame and smoke. The helicopter took the round through the tail end, pitching in the air and crashing to roof of the building in a cacophonous explosion that shook the very foundations of the city itself, it felt. 

Ahead of him, the Project threw one of its glistening, stretching appendages to the sky, wrapping it in prehensile tension around a power column, then used it to throw itself onto the rooftop. It landed with its knees bent, then straightened, and walked into the curtain of smoke and fire. Nicholai couldn’t see; he turned to the screen, watching from the weapon’s point of view. She was still alive, and her mouth dropped open, stance suddenly tense and retreating; she hauled a dead body out of a nearby car, leapt into the driver’s seat, and appeared to struggle with starting it.

Women. Useless. 

Nicholai watched.

It gripped both sides of her car in huge, meaty hands, making to fling it into the distance, an operation programmed in to clear vehicles as obstacles. He ordered the weapon to abort its autopilot; Nicholai tapped the control visual for its right arm, then targeted her neck, sat back, and lit one of the dead man’s forgotten cigarettes. It listened to him — a hand the size of her head thrust through the glass of the windshield with one ramming motion, grabbed her around her slender white throat. She choked and wheezed in guttural, spitting noises, eyes squeezed shut, one large vein standing out on her forehead. She pounded against the Project’s fist with her hands, impotent. On the screen, a sign that said _O2 Saturation_ dropped, dropped, dropped, until it read 91%. 

For a moment, for one, still moment, he could feel his own hands wrapping around her throat, feel the beating pulse slowing under his fingers. Something about the raw power, the abject submission forced from an unwilling body, sent the blood in Nicholai’s body racing and beating, thick and heavy and hard below his belt, suddenly uncomfortable against the stone of the rooftop on which he laid.

She opened one eye, then, twisted her body in a strange motion, and the loud squeal of rubber against stone sounded into the night, audible even from where Nicholai sat. Nicholai paused, and looked up; the weapon was pushed back, its large form bent forward, and was thrown, sailing through the night to the ground, the car smashing nose-first against the ground. Below, Oliveira jumped, whirled in place. Nicholai snarled and flicked the cigarette away, arousal forgotten. He watched the monitor.

Her O2 saturation climbed back into the mid-90s, and though her blood pressure was as high as the night sky, nothing else was amiss. She had somehow survived, like a fucking cockroach that escaped multiple stomps of a boot to skitter into the safety of the dark. Nicholai spat a string of curses in a foreign language, and watched with helpless fury as, focused on her, the Project was hit with a blast from some sort of heavy weapon, falling to the ground with a thunderous thump that echoed through the night, laying prone under a crackling plume of flame. Oliveira jumped down from the car on which he stood, and threw away his weapon. On the screen a message in bright red, flashing and screaming for his attention: _LIMITER DAMAGED LIMITER DAMAGED LIMITER DAMAGED Attempting repair in 10… 9… 8…_

Nicholai’s transceiver pinged, the sign of an incoming message. He growled a curse and then checked it.

**> > Update.**

He sat back, head in his hands, thinking of how to respond, what lie to tell.

_**> > No contact yet. The STARS operative it encountered died to another bioweapon before the Project got to him. I’ll update when I find another.** _

Silence, for minutes, long, agonizing minutes.

**> > Understood. Update when first contact resolution is complete.**

Nicholai’s hands drifted down. They actually bought it.

He had more time.

On the street below, amid the crackling fires and baking heat and glittering galactic swoops of shattered glass, Oliveira collected her in his arms and made off with her, not so much helping her walk as carrying her with brief scuffs of her boots against the ground. On the screen the reading that tracked her pheromones said _8m… 10m… 16m…_ until they were out of sight. Of all mercenaries to have posted on the street, it had to be that fucking human tampon — of course he’d grab up the nearest whore and make off with her. 

Nicholai didn’t see a human woman in his arms, of course: her broad shoulders and limping gait and grimacing face didn’t launch over that valley of understanding. It was his survival that Oliveira carried, his life, his freedom. His freedom from that house, the one with the blue door, paint chipped and worn away as if eaten by a cancer, the dirt floor and the broken wood stove, the one where happiness should have lived, but instead, only housed agony and hunger and sobs in the dark of night. 

Nicholai took an angry, shaking breath while he looked at the fallen weapon as it struggled to get back to its feet, still smoking and bubbling, and began his descent to the street, determined to kill them both before the night was out.


End file.
